The Adolescent Passage

Instructor: Jacqueline Langley, PhD

One of the most challenging journeys for both girls and boys is their transition from childhood to adolescence. This course will look carefully at this journey, contrasting the line of development of the healthy adolescent with the adolescent who experiences a more difficult and darker course that could lead to symptoms of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self mutilation and/or substance abuse. Children in the early adolescent stage contrast widely from those in adolescence proper and late adolescence in their ability to think and reason and regulate their complicated and rapidly changing emotions. This course will address the emotional and cognitive changes occurring from preadolescence, through adolescence proper and then to late adolescence, emphasizing how therapists treating the early adolescent will communicate differently than those who treat the late adolescent. All readings will cover the subjects described above and film will be used as a medium helpful in comparing and contrasting the stages of development discussed in this seminar

Describe the psychological and behavioral changes that occur in each sub-stage of adolescence.

Explain why an adolescent’s difficulty coping with the intensity of newly discovered feelings might result in symptoms of depression and/or suicide.

Describe and identify the stages, behaviors, fantasies and the emotional experience of adolescents who suffer from a sadomasochistic line of pathological development during the adolescent stage of development.

Recognize how an adolescent who suffers from and experiences a sadomasochistic line of development might result in symptoms of substance abuse and eating disorders.

Recognize pathological symptoms and behaviors in adolescents in the classroom and therapeutic consulting room.

Identify techniques helpful in working with symptomatic adolescents, such as working with the adolescent’s parents in tandem with working with the adolescent.